News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Happy Birthday Albert W. Wein (1915-1991)I recently wrote about t he Jewish artsit Leo Freidlander, who was leading American architectural sculptor in the interwar period, and very much part of what we now see as widespread sculptural component of the Art Deco movement. Albert W. Wein, a sculptor of the next generation, whose birthday is today, should also be remembered. His work is also steeped in the style of the 1930s. Like Friedlander, he was influenced by the popular and sometimes slick style Paul Manship. I assume Wein was Jewish - though with the exception of some California synagogue commissions in the 1960s - this does not seem to be a significant factor in his career or work.

Like Friedlander, Wein was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, winning the Rome Prize in Sculpture in 1947. During those two years in Rome he especially turned to classical themes, though this was entirely in keeping with the tenor of the times - from the 1930s many prominent sculptors such as Paul Manship (Prometheus) and Jacques Lipschitz (Minotaur) and were using classical myths and heroes to provide narrative, eroticism, allegory and formal experimentation.

After moving to California in 1955, Wein carried out several commissions for the synagogues - which I am still trying to identify.

One of these commissions was in the mid-1960 for Temple Akiba in Culver City (Los Angeles), whose new building was designed by architect Robert Kennard in 1963. In 2015, when Temple Akiba underwent renovation, the 24 foot sculpture,, now called the Akiba Sculpture, was donated to Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary: Garden of Memories in Los Angeles where it were installed alpmd with other decorative sculpture by Wein. The largest sculpture consists of five welded bronze letters the spell the Hebrew word emunah (faith). This work comes from a period when Wein turned to abstraction - though he continued to work in a more traditional representative language as can be seen in his largest work, the relief for the Libby Dam in Montana.

Wein sculpted the largest
granite bas-relief on a structure in the United States after winning a competition for the decoration of the Libby Dam in Montana which spans the Kootenai River, and is part of a joint project of the United
States and Canada. The 75-ton
27-by-30-foot relief, which recall architectural sculture of the 1930s such as that on Rockefeller center in New York, represents, horses, salmon
and an Indian taming a river, all themes grounded in the cultural iconography of the WPA.

Biography from Blake Benton Fine Art

Born
in New York in 1915 Albert Wein was the only son of an accomplished
woman artist. This early influence had a profound effect on the creative
course that the then young Wein would follow.

When
Albert Wein was twelve years old, Elsa Wein, a "studio" mother enrolled
the two of them into the Maryland Institute, a school that adhered to a
curriculum of academic based Classicism. These early influences in the
classical tradition formed an impression that would last him the rest of
his artistic career. In fact, Albert Wein was once quoted as saying
that the main thrust of his work was "to modernize and stylize the
classical tradition".

The
1929 Stock Market crash put an end to his studies at the institute and
caused the family to return to New York. While attending high school in
the Bronx Wein registered at the National Academy of Design taking up
study under the well-known painter Ivan Olinsky.

By
1932, Wein enrolled in classes at the Beaux-Arts institute in New York
where he expanded upon his academic education in sculpture while
studying under some of the most prominent practitioners in their field.

Wein's
inclination toward modernization and stylistic composition in his work
was made manifest when he decided to enroll in Hans Hofmann's painting
class. Hofmann was regarded as one of the most respected leaders in the
forefront of modernism. It was around this time that Wein sculpted
"Adam," an early powerful modernist work that revealed what would become
his signature stylization of classical tradition.

In
1934 he took a pay-cut to join the W.P.A. during which time he was able
to produce many fine works for both commission and competition.

Among
the many honors and awards bestowed upon Albert Wein during his
illustrious career included those of the coveted Prix de Rome, the
highest award in art, likened to that of the Nobel Prize in literature,
the Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, the Rockefeller Foundation grant for
study and more. He also was included in the "watershed" exhibition
American Sculpture, 1951 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1979 Wein
was elected a full Academician of the National Academy of Design, the
highest honor an American artist can receive. During his prodigious
career he won every major prize given at exhibitions at the National
Sculpture Society and the National Academy of Design.

Some
of his important commissions include those for the Brookgreen Gardens,
(the world's largest outdoor Sculpture Garden, Steuben Glass Co., Bronx
Zoo, Franklin Mint, and the "Libby Dam" bas-relief to name just a few.
The latter work, Wein's Libby Dam project, was the largest granite
bas-relief ever created, weighing some 75 tons and taking several years
to complete. This work "has been likened by critics to other sculptures
in the U.S. grand tradition such as Daniel Chester French's seated
figure of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, Gutzon Borglum's Mount
Rushmore, and Paul Manship's gilded bronze statue of Prometheus in
Rockefeller Center Plaza".

Wein's
modernistic approach is also manifest in his paintings and related
works. He approached painting much the same way he did sculpture, from a
sound academic based foundation that gave him the legitimacy and
freedom to express his modernistic views. His paintings have been widely
exhibited and have gained him much notoriety, with critics lauding his
ability to achieved a balance between the extremes of Classicism and
Modernism. His sound foundation of academic excellence provided the
basis for his stylized, modernistic approach.

Wein
Felt that "every good work of art is a good abstract composition" or
could at least be represented by one. That the subject, devoid of
details and pared down to only what is necessary to convey the "essence"
of the composition is what really mattered in an artistic work.

Albert
Wein passed away in March of 1991. He left behind a legacy of works
that express his goal of forging a union between centuries of artistic
styles.

Gordon
Friedlander - friend and former 21st president of the National
sculpture society stated eloquently: "Albert's work will live on and
will endure." These sculptures have already passed the test of time -
the true measure of the worth of all creative people.

Dorothy Riester (1916-2017), a pillar in the art world of Central New York for decades, died this week at the age of 100. She had remained active and creative until the end of her life. Though not Jewish, Riester contributed some of the most memorable "Jewish art," in upstate New York with her sanctuary sculpture for Temple Adath Yeshurun in Syracuse. Designed by Percival Goodman, the Conservative synagogue dedicated its new home with Riester's powerful combined Decalogue and Ner Tamid over the Ark and menorahs on the bimah in June, 1971. Riester also created a sculpture representing the Burning Bush in Temple Adath's Cooper Meditation Garden. Her sanctuary work recalls that of Seymor Lipton, and is in every way of equal quality.

Riester was one of just a handful of women sculptors who received major synagogue commissions in the 1950s and 1960s. Others were Mitzie Solomon Cunliffe, Luise Kaish and Louise Nevelson.

Riester did her undergraduate work at William and Mary and Carnegie
Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and graduate
work in ceramics at University of Pittsburgh; she received her master’s
degree from Syracuse University in sculpture and design.

Dorothy had many accomplishments in her long life of art, teaching, and activism. Perhaps her most lasting contribution is the creation of the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in
Cazenovia, New York, in 1991 for which she served as director and president and hen as an advisor after it was incorporated as a non-profit. In 2014 Dorothy's house and studio at Stone Quarry were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[n.b. part II of this post will be devoted entirely to the Stanton Street Shul wall paintings]

I was surprised to realize this
spring, while teaching a seminar on synagogue architecture and historic
preservation at Cornell University, that I have never devoted a blogpost
to the history, architecture, and ongoing preservation efforts at the New York's
Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshe Brzezan ("Sons of Jacob, People of
Brzezan"), better known as the Stanton Street Shul.

It was surprising and a little
embarrassing since it was Jonathan Boyarin, Mann Professor of Jewish Studies at
Cornell and author of Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul who invited me
to teach the course, and Jonathan's wife, Dr. Elissa Sampson, who has championed the preservation of the synagogue and in the past
has made me welcome there.

I've been thinking a lot this summer
about the Stanton Street Shul and the few other extant Lower East Side
synagogues because of the recent fiery destruction
of Beth HaMedrash HaGadol, one of the grandest and most storied of the
neighborhoods Orthodox synagogues, irrevocably burned on May 14, 2017 (see my post of July 4th)

The Stanton Street Shul, which is tiny
in comparison to Beth HaMedrash HaGadol, is one of the few intact tenement synagogues of the Lower East Side. Despite vastly changed demographics in the area,
it has managed to continue as a functioning house of worship with a congregation
embracing continuity of the older immigrant population while also
welcoming younger singles and couples just starting families.

While most synagogues in the area
have been destroyed or entirely transformed for new residential or commercial
use, the Stanton Street Shul still conveys in its constricted space the real
feel of a special kind of Jewish worship space of decades past. It is also
important for its painted mazoles or mazolot (zodiac signs),
probably painting in the early 1930s, which decorate its walls (read more about the mazoles here).

The shul’s size, configuration, and
decorations are survivors and now surrogates for all the similar shuls that are
long gone; either demolished or transformed into commercial or residential
space. A visitor to the Lower East Side needs to experience both the grandeur of
the restored Eldridge Street Synagogue and the simple warmth of the Stanton
Street Shul to begin to understand the diversity of religious expression of
Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Both the now-destroyed Beth HaMedrash
HaGadol and the well-preserved Bialystoker Synagogue were created out of former
churches. But Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshe Brzezan was created in 1913 by
architect Louis Sheinart on a tiny, 99.5’x20’ lot that had pre-existing front and back buildings whose
remains were incorporated into the new Shul. The greatest structural damage appears to be in these older walls. Despite its Renaissance-inspired
façade, the building is humble throughout.

When I lived in New York from
the late 1970s through the early 1990s there were still other examples of "tenement shuls" such as
Adas Yisroel Anshe Mezeritch. Today, however, other than Stanton Street, one can
only visit (and attend services at) the beautifully restored Kehila Kedosha
Janina, the tenement synagogue of New York's Greek Romaniote community on
Broome Street. There are a few other restored and/or active synagogues in the
area, but none of them take us to the tenement and landsmanshaft story
of Eastern European immigrant Jews the way the Stanton Street Shul does. Today,
it is imperative that this space and its decorations be preserved in way that is both historically
accurate and Jewishly functional.

The Stanton Street Shul is well documented. It
has a good wikipedia page,
and also it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since
2002 with a nomination form (full pdf here)
written by Anthony Robbins, who knows his stuff. The nomination came after the
shul was almost demolished when, in 1999, the rabbi tried to sell the building
against the wishes of the small congregation. A resulting lawsuit was settled
in 2000 in favor of the congregation, and this led to the revived commitment to
the synagogue as both a living congregation and an historic building.

NY, NY. Stanton Street Shul, Damage to interior wall surface (this is the worst instance). There can be many reasons for the deterioration of wall finishes, but the most likely in this case is water penetration from the walls. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2017).

NY,
NY. Stanton Street Shul, Damage to ceiling. Earlier repairs have stopped most of the water penetration from the roof, gutter and other exterior points of entry, but the interior damage seen here on the original tin ceiling, still needs repair. Unfortunately, there are probably also within the walls untraced corroded iron pipes and channels for wiring that now serve as conduits for damp. The hole is because a section was removed to insert a probe. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2017).

After the NR designation, the
congregation mounted a successful fund-raising campaign in 2005 that enabled a
complete roof replacement and other repairs. The small congregation has been
dedicated to this mission for more than a decade. The building was already in
disrepair when it suffered ­­serious water damage from Hurricane Sandy in
2012. The NY Landmarks Conservancy provided a $30,000 matching grant
which is allowing some urgent repairs to take place this summer, but the under
and overlying problems are more severe and need substantially more funds.

Since 2000 maintenance,
conservation, restoration, and remodeling have taken place in fits and spurts
as needs required and funds were available. An intensive examination of
the plaster and paint of the sanctuary walls - specially the condition of the
painted mazoles - was carried out by Beth Edelstein, Sarah Barack, and Rosemarijn Keppler in 2009-11 The full report - essential background for
anyone dealing with the reservation of wall paintings - can be be found online here. This resulted is the complete conservation of one of the
wall panels as a test and as an example - but funds have not been raised to
carry out the rest of this work.

Meanwhile, greater underlying structural and
moisture problems in the walls have further endangered the test mural
conservation. As a practical matter, all of the murals are decaying extremely rapidly
and decisions need to be made as to what to do.

At present, the Holy Land scenes of The Tower of David (Migdal David) and Rachel's tomb (Kever Rachel) which flank the Ark appear to be in stable condition, but many of the painted mazoles are deteriorating. These murals are rare in their extensive presentation and probably
unique in New York in their survival. They
rank among the most intact and representative examples of the Jewish traditional
painted art in New York, and in the world. They are part of a nearly-vanished tradition still evident at the Vilna Shul in Boston and the "Lost Shul Mural" in Burlington, Vermont, both places where the value of the murals have been recognized and where extensive conservation and rescue work has been undertaken. Previous New York examples have
either been destroyed or “restored” by overpainting (as at Linath Hazedeck in Brooklyn), and even substantial reinvention by mixing old and new designs (as at the Bialystoker Synagogue in Manhattan).

These synagogue paintings and many
others now lost comprise one leg of the table of Jewish immigrant folk art.
As Murray Zimiles showed in hisGilded Lions and Jeweled Horses, From the Synagogue to the Carousel 2007-08 exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, wood carvers and carpenters made fancy and often exuberant arks and other wood
items, best known through many carved lions and eagles in synagogues, as well
as festive (and secular) carousel animals. Textile artists embroidered Torah covers,
Ark curtains, coverings for the synagogue reader’s table, and other cloth
items. Paper artists made paper-cuts for home and synagogue, and decorated
certificates, calendars, and other items, Lastly - but importantly - painters decorated synagogue
walls and ceilings with symbolic and landscape scenes, including mazoles and scenes of the Holy Land as
at Stanton Street Shul. But these - because they are attached to synagogue walls - have not generally been represented in museum exhibition of Jewish art.

Almost too late, the small number of surviving works is
now being documented studied and – when possible – conserved. They are
direct connections with the immigrant artists whose hands made these works, and
by extension, they help link American synagogue art to much older decorative
tradition that once thrived in Eastern Europe but is now mostly lost [for lectures by me from 2013 on this subject click here].

Congregations
in Toronto and Montreal, Canada; and in Burlington, Vermont have made or are
making heroic (and often expensive) efforts to conserve and preserve wall
paintings that are part of the same "family" of tradition Jewish religious art. It is important that New Yorkers undertake a similar effort to save
those at Stanton Street Shul.

The major technical obstacle to the preservation of the wall painting is that they are applied to plaster that apparently sits directly on the brick structure walls that needs work within. Structural integrity and mechanical systems all need to
be tested and upgraded and it is difficult - and might be impossible - to do this without affecting the murals. Ideally this should precede the conservation and restoration
of all interior finishes, but the murals would have to be consolidated and secured before this work begins. How this can be done is under discussion now.

In 2012, the facade rose window was restored by a glass preservation team of Larry Gordon and Reuben Bechtold who reused as much
of the old glass as possible. The frame was redone out of old cypress and restorers were able to
reuse a good deal of the old glass.
did the work.

Also in 2012, a complete historic structures report
and preservation plan was prepared for the building. To do everything that is
needed it is estimated at least $3.5 million dollars will be needed. This will
require a big congregational commitment and creative fund raising to establish
some public-private partnerships. It can be done - Kehila Kedosha Janina on
Broome Street is proof of what is possible.

This summer a new restoration effort
in getting started. It will be hard work.
But it begins. The congregation recently approved a plan to move ahead with
approximately $200,000 in essential repairs.

The shul
that stands at 180 Stanton Street is the first American home of Congregation
Bnai Jacob Anshe Brzezan ("Sons of Jacob, People of Brzezan").
Incorporated in 1893, the community of Jewish immigrants from the town of
Brzezan in Southeast Galicia, (formerly Austria-Hungary, then Poland, now the
Ukraine), created their place of worship from an existing structure on the site
in 1913, within a thriving Lower East Side Jewish community....

... The
stone and brick structure is wedged into a tiny, narrow lot—only twenty feet
wide and roughly 100 feet long. A three-story building, the synagogue houses
the beis midrash (house of study) in the basement, where members daven during
the week in daily prayer. It includes a raised reader’s platform, and a
built-in ark for the torah scrolls at the north end. Rising above the room on
either side are galleries for the women’s section, and a pressed-metal ceiling
with two octagonal skylight domes. A series of 12 wall paintings of the months,
with zodiac signs – said to be unique to the Lower East Side – date back at
least to 1939.

In 1952,
Anshei Brzezan merged with the joint congregation Bnai Joseph Dugel Macheneh
Ephraim which represented two other towns from Poland, Rymanow and Bluzhower, a
common practice at a time when the Jewish LES was shrinking so rapidly. Many of
the shuls were also being displaced by the urban renewal projects taking place
in lower Manhattan in the late 50s. The Stanton Street Shul, located in a
Latino part of the Lower East Side, was one of only a few that survived.

Again,
from the congregation website:

The
survival of this small shul (one of approximately a dozen functioning
synagogues in the neighborhood today) is not only a testament to the
perseverance of its elderly, immigrant members, for whom it is a true home and
living memorial to otherwise forgotten towns. It is also a symbol of the
renewal of the Lower East Side as a neighborhood where younger Jews with their
own traditions are now moving in and forming connections, reweaving the chain
of generations so nearly unraveled in the turmoil of the twentieth century.

The synagogues of architect Arnold W. Brunner (1857-1925) are increasingly well known. I have published about Brunner, as have colleagues Steven Fine and David Kaufman. But despite a few articles and passing mentions in various works, there is still much to be discovered and presented about Brunner's influential residential, institutional, synagogue, and urban design work (I've been working off and on toward that book for several years now).

I'm inspired to come back now to one significant, though little known, Brunner project because I recently walked by it while visiting David Kaufman. So of course the building - the former Congregation Shaaray Tefila, built in 1896, and now the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral - came up in conversations about New York synagogues and Jewish history.

Earliest image of former Shaaray Tefila from New York Times (April 14, 1894, p. 8)

Brunner
designed at least seven independent synagogues as well as several
synagogues included as parts of larger complexes, especially
hospitals. The early synagogues are
each quite distinct, as Brunner incorporated elements from
various sources, and was still grappling with his own idea of what
a synagogue is and how a synagogue building should appear. In the mid-1890s one can see Brunner moving away from the more exotic Romanesque, Venetian and Moorish influences and developing a more contemporary style rooted in Georgian or Colonial architecture, and then, with the success of congregation Shearith Israel, combining this with fully classical exteriors. By the
late 1890s he settled on his preferred form and decorative palette – which he stayed with for
a quarter century. This was linked to an intellectual foundation for his
synagogue designs, adapting ancient architecture to contemporary needs as expressed in his writings on synagogue architecture.

Because they were highly visible, all of
Brunner’s New York synagogues were quite influential, though his
own rapid development in the 1890s made his earliest work at Beth El
and Shaaray Tefila almost obsolete as a source for others within a
few years of their erection. Still, both synagogues were copied in
part, and at least two close copies of Shaaray Tefila were built by
other architects in Manhattan.Just
two year’s after the dedication of Beth-El, Brunner (and his partner Tryon)
were at work on a new synagogue project – the new home of
Congregation Shaaray Tefila, designated for a site at West 82nd
Street and Amsterdam avenues on the Upper West Side. The cornerstone
was laid on October 5, 1893. The rabbi of Beth-El, Rev. Dr. K. Kohler offered the dedicatory
prayer. [see: “Synagogue Cornerstone Laid,” New York Times (Oct. 6,
1893), p. 9.]. Congregation Shaaray Tefila grew out of
Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. The congregation had previously
worshiped at Broadway near Franklin Street, and then moved to Wooster
Street, and then in 1866 they bought land on 44th street near
Broadway and erected a new building designed by Henry Fernbach, that
was dedicated May 4, 1869. Brunner probably grew up as a member of
that congregation and would have been very familiar with the earlier
building, and probably celebrated his Bar mitzvah there in the fall
of 1870. The building influenced his design for Beth-El.
Services for Brunner’s deceased uncle Samuel Brunner (1830-1872)
took place there in 1872. Samuel was the brother of William Brunner,
and he was married to Brunner’s mother’s sister Sophia
(1846-1922). There were even closer family reasons for Brunner’s
receiving the commission. The president of the Congregation was
Solomon B. Solomon (1842-1930), the younger brother of Brunner’s
mother Isabella. Arnold Brunner’s grandfather, Barnett Solomon
(1806-1897), past president of the congregation, had the honor of
tapping the cornerstone into place.

The design of the synagogue was
described in the New York Times as being:

“designed in the Moresque manner, the
Alhambra at Grenada (sic) having been taken as a model for the
ornamentation and general treatment. The front will be partly of
Indiana limestone and partly of brick and terracotta, of the same
color. The main entrance will be arcaded, and over this will be an
elaborate group of arched windows, separated by slender columns with
carved capitals. The vestibule will be reached by a double flight of
steps, with stone balustrades. The auditorium will be 60 by 70 feet
and 50 feet in height, and will seat 650 people. The ark will be
placed in an arched recess, against a background of highly-decorated
arcaded windows, filled with stained glass. By special arrangement
of lighting, the same effect will be obtained at night as by day.”

The form of the building façade can also
be described as Venetian, for Brunner adapted the traditional
Venetian palace façade for the synagogue’s public
face. There were other Venetian buildings in the city at the time
and the influence of John Ruskin in America was still strong. Many of
New York’s Venetian buildings however, such as the Academy of
Design (1862) and McKim Mead and Whites’ Herald Building (18??),
use the Doge’s Palace as a model. As Rachel Wischnitzer pointed out many years ago, Brunner also used Venetian elements in Temple Beth El.

Within a decade Brunner would fully eschew the Moorish style for synagogue. In his 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia article he wrote:

The general results of the Moorish
movement have been unfortunate; the greatest delicacy of feeling for
both form and color is needed to preserve the beauty of Moorish
architecture, and curiously shaped domes and towers and misapplied
horseshoe arches, turrets, and pinnacles have often resulted,
presenting in many cases a grotesque appearance rather than the
dignity and simplicity that should have been attained.

The unpleasant
results may be seen in St. Petersburg, London, Philadelphia, and in
many parts of Germany. Emphasizing the towers that contain the stairs
to the galleries, which are invariably on either side of the main
entrance, is a common device, and the Temple Emanu-El in New York is
so treated. In this case the minarets are graceful and skilfully
placed; but the usual result is a loss of dignity; a single central
motive is more pleasing.

The most
successful buildings in all great architectural periods are simple in
design; whether large or small, richly decorated or not, simplicity
is their main characteristic, and the desire to produce the
picturesque and unusual is fatal to the dignity which should
characterize the synagogue.

But in the early 1890s Brunner was still content to use Moorish forms - even though the building's side walls, visible only from within, employed large Georgian tri-partite window arrangements, with the center window much wider and taller than the flanking one, in the manner of Palladian windows.

Like the Venetian palazzo, the
synagogue is not free-standing, and is mostly viewed obliquely, from
one end or the other of the relatively narrow West 82nd Street.
Unlike Beth El, with its great dome facing Central Park, there is no
distant view of Shaaray Tefila. Like Venetian palaces (and many New
York row houses) Brunner placed the more important spaces high up.
The main entrance is reached be ascending stairs which run parallel
to the street and the façade, and terminate on a wide stoop from
which one can survey the street the height, or turn and enter through
a colonnade of four short columns carrying slightly pointed arches.
Both stairs and stoop are lined with a fine balustrade. This type of
portico, which is copied above, but with taller windows, is also a
staple of Venetian palace facades.

The design of Sharray Tefila was subsequently copied
almost in its entirety for New York’s Kehillah Jeshurun on East
85th Street in 1902 by George Pelham (this synagogue was severely damaged by fire in 2011). The more overt Moorish or
Venetian arcades have had their pointed arches transformed with sober
round-arched opening. But otherwise the Pelham’s façade copies
Brunner’s in all its essentials. That an Orthodox congregation
should sanction the copying of the design of a Reform synagogue is
remarkable, and perhaps is a testimony to the effectiveness of
Brunner’s solution for a synagogue forced to build on a side
street. The design was copied yet again by Congregation Sons of
Kalwarie for their building on Pike Street on the Lower East Side.

Leo Friedlander may be the least known but most visible of American Jewish sculptors He was a leader of architectural and monumental sculpture in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and many of his works still adorn public buildings and spaces.The height of his career was in the 1930s when his figurative sculpture - free standing and in relief with recognizable but slightly distorted body types - was applied to some of the visible sites in New York, Washington, D.C. and in other major cities. I don't think anyone today would consider Friedland a great sculptor - but he was regarded as a highly capable one, and a sculptor who was able to consistently combine his personal aesthetic with an appeal to popular taste. He combined his work straddled traditional Beaux-Arts figurative composition with Art Deco patterning and stylization.

He sculpted reliefs on Rockefeller Center in New York and provided the highly visible thirty-three-foot figures
representing the "Four Freedoms" (speech, press, religion, and assembly) at the central esplanade of the 1939 World's Fair. The Fair was one of the the last great moments for figurative sculpture in the United States. Following World War II abstraction quickly gained favor. Friedlander was president of the National Sculpture Society in the 1950s a position from which he railed against the newest trends.

At Rockefeller Center, Friedlander supplied reliefs on several themes for the side entrances. He had previously worked with architect Raymond Hood on the Social Science Building for the 1933-34 Century of Progress International Exposition, in Chicago, and had also been an assistnat earlier in his career to Paul Manship, who sculpted the central plaza figure of Prometheus. Friedlander's primary relief was at the 49th Street entrance, and was titled: Transmission Receiving an Image of Dancers and Flashing it Through the Ether by Means of Television to Reception, Symbolized by Mother Earth and her Child, Man, perhaps the first work of art addressing the new medium of television. Carol Krinsky notes in her book Rockefeller Center (Oxford, 1978, p. 144)that John D. Rockefeller did not care for Friedlander's work and that he wrote that they were "gross and beautiful."

Friedlander is also well known for his colossal
public monuments, including the equestrian statues for the Arts of War installation of the equestrian statues Valor and Sacrifice
at Washington, D.C.'s Arlington Memorial Bridge.

Friedlander is included in Who's Who in American Jewry 1926, but I have found few other mentions of Jewish affiliation. He was born in New York David and Margarethe (King) Friedlander. He was a precocious artist and exhibited drawings at the Art Students League in New York
when he was only twelve years old. He trained in Europe at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Brussels and Paris, and then as an Fellow in Sculpture at the American Academy in Rome (Prix de Rome 1913-1916), probably the first Jewish artist so honored. He also worked as an assistant to sculptor Paul Manship, America's leading exponent of Art Deco style sculpture.

Friedlander later headed the sculpture department at New York University and was also president of the National Sculpture Society. In 1936, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1949.

I have not done any deep research on Friedlander, but am not aware of any specifically Jewish commissions or works of Jewish content. There is, however, a bronze sculpture Tree of Life in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. While this theme could be Jewish, but it is a common theme non-denominational theme, too. You can see other works by Friedlander in the Smithsonian collection here.

Friedlander was also one of many leading artists who exhibited a model at the Jewish Museum in October 1949 for the proposed Holocaust Monument planned for Riverside Park in New York City, but never built.

Here is a partial list of his major works (from Wikipedia). I'll expand this in the future:

• The central pediment (1930) at the Museum of the City of New York • Sculptures at Washington Memorial Arch, Valley Forge National Historical Park • Reliefs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. • Sculpted reliefs (1931), Jefferson County Courthouse, Birmingham, Alabama • Pylons, Social Science Building, (1932) 1933-34 Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago • Reliefs (1939) on the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center • The Arts of War sculptures, Sacrifice and Valor, flanking the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. • Four Freedoms statues, 1940 New York World's Fair • Memory Sculpture, War Memorial, Richmond, VA • American Military Cemetery, Hamm, Luxembourg • Covered Wagon sculptural panels, Oregon State Capitol, Salem, OR

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Welcome

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.

About Me

Samuel D. GruberI am a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of
documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition
and education projects in America and abroad.
I was trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and
archaeologist, but for 25 years my special expertise has developed in
Jewish art, architecture and historic sites. My various blogs about Jewish Art and Monuments, Central New York and Public Art and Memory allow me to
clear my email and my desk, and to report on some of my travels, by
passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and
compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following.
Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics
posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss.

My Lectures & Presentations

“The Stone Shall be a Witness: Strategies for the Preservation and Presentation of Destroyed Structures,” Presentation at International Conference “How to Commemorate the Great Synagogue of Vilna Site?,” Vilnius, Lithuania Sept 4-5, 2017.